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Incident response

incident_impact_observed event schema

An event that links a declared incident to an affected customer workflow. Keep request payloads out of the incident record.

Reviewed by the Telemetry product team on . We checked what each event represents, which service sends it, field types, sensitive data, the example, and validation steps. Who reviews this page

Question this event answers

Which accounts and workflows were affected during an incident?

Fields
9
Required
9
Send and check an event

Record and query incident_impact_observed

Document what each incident_impact_observed row represents and which service sends it. Send test events to check the fields, then verify that the query answers your question.

  1. 1

    Outcome becomes final

    Affected service or incident enrichment pipeline emits only when an operation falls inside a confirmed impact rule.

  2. 2

    Choose the fields

    9 required fields preserve the declared grain: One affected operation associated with a declared incident.

  3. 3

    Check the test event

    Check types, UTC time, alternate outcomes, idempotency, and every pseudonymous or review-classified field.

  4. 4

    Query the result

    Which accounts and workflows were affected during an incident?

Grain

One affected operation associated with a declared incident.

Owner

Affected service or incident enrichment pipeline

Emit when

When an operation falls inside a confirmed impact rule.

Field contract

Field types and data to exclude

Keep field names and types stable once production queries depend on them. Document optional fields and add them only when they answer a specific question.

FieldTypeRequiredPrivacyMeaning
timestamp_utctimestampyesnon-sensitiveUTC time when the operation finishes.
event_idstringyesnon-sensitiveStable unique identifier used for deduplication.
releasestringyesnon-sensitiveApplication or service version that emitted the event.
account_idstringyespseudonymousStable internal account identifier, never an email or name.
incident_idstringyesnon-sensitiveStable declared incident identifier.
servicestringyesnon-sensitiveAffected service.
workflowstringyesnon-sensitiveAffected customer workflow.
regionstringyesnon-sensitiveCoarse region for impact grouping.
impact_typestringyesnon-sensitiveLow-cardinality symptom such as timeout or elevated latency.

Synthetic JSON event

{
  "timestamp_utc": "2026-07-28T14:31:40Z",
  "event_id": "evt_impact_01",
  "account_id": "acct_8f31",
  "release": "2026.07.2",
  "incident_id": "inc_checkout_latency",
  "service": "checkout",
  "workflow": "subscription_upgrade",
  "region": "north_america",
  "impact_type": "upstream_timeout"
}

Privacy review

Review identifiers before ingestion

This example uses synthetic identifiers. Pseudonymous values can still be personal data, and review fields can expose business or provider context. Apply your own consent, retention, access, residency, and deletion requirements.

  • account_id: pseudonymous

Validation checklist

Test the schema before building a dashboard

  • Send one known incident_impact_observed fixture after the documented outcome boundary.
  • Verify all 9 required fields arrive with the documented types.
  • Retry the same event identifier and confirm the chosen deduplication behavior.
  • Send a controlled failure or alternate outcome when the workflow supports one.
  • Run the related SQL over a fixed window and reconcile the result to the fixture.

Common mistakes

Record one result per row

  • Emitting incident_impact_observed before affected service or incident enrichment pipeline knows the final outcome.
  • Mixing different kinds of results in one table, which makes counts and rates ambiguous.
  • Replacing controlled categories with raw URLs, payloads, prompts, or error text.
  • Changing a field type in place after saved queries and dashboards depend on it.
  • Adding identifiers without a documented investigation, access, and retention need.

Use the contract

Query the event and set up monitoring

Related contracts

Send a test event before production traffic

Create a free API key, send the synthetic event, and inspect the inferred table before connecting a live workflow.

Test this schema